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distorted, colourful, and infinitely refracting images of the viewer, thus re- contextualizing them as the centre focus of the art.
Mills explains how bringing the viewer into the piece is the essence of how people engage with art in the contemporary world — when a person snaps or shares a photo or video of a work, they’re transcending the role of observer and becoming a participant. Mills is interested in how opening up the capacity for others to engage with art allows it to be seen in different ways, and for the art to act as a tool for others’ creativity. “When I see a video on Instagram of somebody dancing in front of one of my pieces, it’s just fantastic. It adds a protagonist that isn’t me because it isn’t about me. It’s about everybody else,” he muses.
Perhaps it is the way that Mills’s work is created out of the tension between the scientific and the unknown, but his art emits an atmosphere that approaches sacredness. This is more explicit in some projects, such as Eternal Light + a Spotless Mirror: a mirror that takes a single point of light and explodes it into a large array, intentionally giving “the depth and breadth of what eternity might look like,” says Mills. The installation was produced for an exhibit about the Flemish Renaissance painter Jan van Eyck, as a nod to Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, a polyptych attributed to van Eyck and his brother, Hubert. In the painting, there is an inscription above the head of Mary that refers to her
as a “reflection of eternal light in a spotless mirror.” Mills says that both his art and spirituality are united by seeking to inspire a feeling of awe. “What I’m trying to produce are these artifices that open up portals into different ideas or perspectives on reality,” Mills explains. “That’s what spiritualism is trying to do as well, in some ways.”
The connection between his work and the divine is even more marked by the project he’s currently working on. In Belgium, many churches that sat empty for years were turned into businesses — and some along the coast became lighthouses. Mills found this transformation interesting, how “the idea of a guiding light can be something that is faith-based or can be something very practical.” The city of Brussels accepted his proposal to rework the decommissioned Boondael Chapel into a public art piece. By fitting its windows with three-dimensional glass tubes that capture light and bounce it in a total internal reflection, he created vortices. This technique is inspired by the Fresnel lenses used by lighthouses, which draw in ships by dispersing light in a particular way; Mills found there to be a serendipity between that and how the stained glass of a church window draws people in through its glow. As always, Mills remains working in the tension between two ideas, whisking up magic from strange in-between spaces — kind of like how beams of light cast out brilliant colours by bouncing back and forth inside of mirrors and glass.
AN INFINITE SELF BY JORDAN SÖDERBERG MILLS
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